


three's a crowd, so what the fuck is four?

by shitgekis (payroo)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, baby queer jean, troll!marco
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-29 23:18:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/payroo/pseuds/shitgekis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean was happy. He was damn happy, maybe happier than he had ever been. He had a 3.8 GPA and the most supportive, loving, and generally adorable boyfriend one could imagine.</p><p>So why the fuck did he find his thoughts straying to Armin, of all people? And what is he supposed to do when Armin's asshole boyfriend Eren unknowingly burdens him with a terrible secret that Jean is definitely not overreacting about, whatever Marco might think?</p><p>A comedy of errors, confused sexual awakenings, and realignments of Jean Kirschstein's horizons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the current strange but not altogether unpleasant state of jean's life

“Hey there, Jean. Working hard?” 

Jean woke with a start at the heavy thump of a backpack landing next to his face. The letters of the reading he had fallen asleep on blurred before his unfocused eyes as he scrambled upright.

“Or more like hardly working?” Marco grinned down at him. How had he ever thought that this guy was nice? He was one hundred percent pure devil. Jean glared at him through bleary eyes as Marco leaned on the backpack he had deposited on the library table. 

“Give me a break man, I've been here since eight this morning. Orgo's gonna be the death of me. Just put me out of my misery now and spare me the slow agony of this test.”

Marco ruffled his hair fondly and leaned in for a quick peck to his lips. “You'll do fine, babe.”

“Says the honors student,” Jean grumbled.

“Says the fellow honors student,” Marco smirked back and flicked Jean's nose. PDA in the library. Jean was sure that was welcome during midterms week. Then again, he was never the type to give a fuck about bothering his neighbors.

“Anyways,” and Marco's tone was light in the way that Jean had come to recognize as the other boy being unsure or hesitant about what he was saying, “the funniest thing happened after my Soc lecture today. Dazz asked me to go have a coffee with him some time.”

“Dazz?” Jean's startled yelp drew more than a few glares from the tables of stressed out students around them. He glared back, but lowered his voice to a strangled whisper. “ _Dazz?_ ”

“Hey, don't be like that,” Marco shoved Jean playfully, but his face was serious. “He's actually a nice guy once you get to know him.”

“Yeah, but... seriously, Dazz? For the longest time I thought he was a community auditor! Have you seen his face?”

Uh oh. Marco had his official Serious Face on now. “Jean.”

Jean grimaced, and sank his head back down onto the desk. He sighed deeply. “I'm being an ass again, aren't I?”

“Yes, babe, you are,” Marco said sweetly, patting him lightly on the head. “Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that that'll be in my schedule this week. Enjoy your studying!” And with that he hefted his backpack back onto his shoulder and left to go.

“Yeah, yeah, love you too,” Jean grumbled after Marco's departing wave. 

He had to laugh into his organic chemistry book at the sudden absurdity of the turn of events his life had taken over the past semester. Jean Kirschstein, high school valedictorian and med-school-bound college honor-roll sophomore majoring in molecular biology, had deviated pretty damn far from the master plan of a conventional, high-paying, white-picket-fence-and-2.5-kids life he had laid out for himself.

And surprisingly, he was more than okay with that.


	2. cathartic kissing and tearful embraces, or, the get-together scene

Jean was in a weird emotional place.

Part of it was the strange emptiness left in his soul by the completion of four final exams and a term paper. Another part of it was the indeterminate amount of alcohol he had consumed in his post-exam haze of exhaustion and hedonism the night before.

But most of it, Jean suspected, was the guy sprawled next to and partially over him on the ratty futon in their room. 

Jean lay still as Marco snored gently into his shoulder. He studied his features as they were slowly lit by the bleak morning light creeping in through the blinds. 

The sun on his face strengthened his faltering resolve, and Jean came to a decision he had been putting off making for an entire semester. He was going to tell Marco how he felt.

He carefully wriggled his way out from under Marco's head and arm with little more than a sleepy grumble from his roommate slash best friend slash potentially more. First things first – he wasn't ready to discuss complicated shit like feelings until he had a shower and felt remotely human again.

He really should have acted sooner on this whole mess, he mentally berated himself as he let the hot water wash away the ravages of last night's excess. Then maybe it wouldn't have gotten this bad, to the point where Jean was seriously considering having a quick wank before confessing his months of thickening sexual tension. God, did he really just have that thought? He turned the tap to the cold setting. But no, there had been midterms and finals and papers to write, and in some sad parody of normal student life Jean had found it easier to procrastinate on his personal affairs than on his academic work. 

Well, now that they were officially in winter break, Jean had no excuses left. He toweled himself dry with shaking hands. Intellectually he was pretty sure he wasn't too far off base, that the sexual tension in their friendship had indeed been shared and that his feelings were probably reciprocated. But emotionally he was a nervous mess, paranoid that he had imagined each warm smile and lingering touch. Hey, he was still coming to terms with his own bisexuality, or queerness, or whatever it was. It was complicated.

Marco was conscious by the time he got back, but barely so. “Mm, morning Jean. How are you still alive after yesterday?” he said in between yawns.

“Hey, I actually remembered to drink a shit-ton of water after,” Jean said, his mouth responding in autopilot while his brain summoned the courage to bring up the topic of feelings.

“Oh, so you had to get up to piss.” Marco rubbed his eyes and blinked sleepily up at Jean. “Well, I'm glad you managed to get off the futon for that.”

Jean didn't even process his words, as every cell in his body had been gearing up for the sentence he was about to blurt. “MarcoIthinkI'mbiorqueerorwhateverandIreallylikeyouasmorethanafriend.”  
Marco's brow wrinkled. “Sorry, I didn't catch a single word of that. What did you say?”

Stomach backflipping out of his body, Jean repeated his sentence. When he had finished, Marco just sank back down into the futon, sighing something that sounded suspiciously like “finally.”

“I don't want to ruin our friendship,” Jean said desperately, face burning up as he started to panic at the lack of cathartic kissing and tearful embraces. “Um, I understand if you don't feel comfortable rooming with me anymore-”

“Shush, Jean,” Marco grinned up at him. His eyes were still red and swollen from hangover. Jean thought he was never more beautiful than he was in that moment. “Obviously, I like you too. Yes, in that way. Just let me brush my teeth and take a shower first.”

And he left to do just that, leaving Jean sitting on the futon, unsure of whether to pump his fist in victory or collapse in a bundle of nerves. He settled for a compromise, fist colliding with the metal support as he missed the seat and tumbled to the ground. He was still clutching his hand and cursing in agony as a freshly-showered Marco came back. 

Okay, now it was time for cathartic kissing and tearful embraces. Even if most of the tears on Jean's part were for his bruised knuckles.

When they managed to fall apart long enough to draw breath, Jean asked, “Wait, why did you say 'finally' earlier?”

Marco gave one of his rarely seen devilish grins. “For someone who prides himself for his brutal honesty, you sure took a long time with yourself.”

“Hey, this shit is hard! Not all of us have been out since freshman year!”

Marco's grin softened into one of those warm smiles that Jean decided he had definitely not been imagining, one of those smiles that was just for him. “I know. I'm proud of you. And I'm glad. I'm really glad.”

And Jean couldn't protest that Marco was definitely not the angel that people liked to think he was, because Marco's lips were back on his own and he wasn't really capable of thought at that point.

All in all, it was shaping up to be a good winter break.

In hindsight, Jean supposed he had no way of knowing that his days of reluctant self discovery and confusing sexual awakenings were anything but done. 


	3. jean gets confused, eavesdrops, and jumps to conclusions, becoming more confused

Jean was pretty sure he was a terrible person.

He had been dating Marco for about a month now, and it had been, in a word, _awesome_. Jean had never been good at the dating scene, even less so the whole first date thing. Happily, Marco was already his best friend. They were at the level where they felt comfortable farting in front of each other, for god's sake. In retrospect, taking their relationship to a romantic level had been easy as breathing. 

And Jean was happy. He was damn happy, maybe happier than he had ever been. He had a 3.8 GPA and the most supportive, loving, and generally adorable boyfriend one could imagine.

So why the fuck did he find his thoughts straying to Armin, of all people?

It had started innocently enough. Jean and Armin had been on the friend of friends level for a while. Marco and Armin had been freshman year roommates and fellow politics majors, and even though Marco had since moved on to the greener pastures of sociology, they still played in the badminton club together and hung out frequently.

Jean knew Armin enough to have a vaguely positive impression of the guy, and it seemed only natural for them to partner up as study buddies for their shared statistics class. For a low-level class, it was surprisingly difficult (maybe that was due to Professor Levi being such a hard-ass) and Jean found himself seeing a lot more of Armin than he had expected. They became friends pretty easily, and Jean wished that he hadn't been so hesitant about him just because his boyfriend was Eren Jaeger.

(Eren Jaeger, the rival slash frenemy Jean had never wanted to make. They were hallmates last year and in the same freshman writing seminar. Usually that meant an easy first friend. That was tragically not the case here. The tone of their relationship had been set during a round robin of comments on drafts with the names redacted. Jean, helpful as always, had been brutally honest about the overly nonobjective stance and meandering argument of what turned out to be Eren's paper. Eren, as Jean soon discovered, was a journalism major, and he had not been happy about Jean's comment. A discussion about objectivity in writing had turned into a heated debate, which quickly escalated into name-calling and petty insults. Of course, Eren had to be in almost every other general education class Jean was in, and many a class discussion had been taken over by the two boys trying to one-up each other. Strangely enough, their social circles tended to overlap a lot, and they had grudgingly learned a sort of sullen tolerance for the other's presence, a fragile ceasefire which persisted to this day.)

Anyways, Jaeger aside, Armin was a pretty cool guy: so smart it was almost scary, but without an inflated ego to match. He was cute as hell too.

And that was where Jean's problems lay.

It was another one of their weekly problem set sessions in the library. Jean was chipping away at his work, trying to focus on linear regressions and not on the charming little ponytail Armin had pulled his hair into. It was working, for the most part, until Armin interrupted his thoughts with an unfairly delightful giggle.

Jean dropped his pencil in surprise.

“Sorry,” Armin said, with an apologetic grin as he fiddled with his phone, “Eren just sent me the funniest text.”

Jean meant to roll his eyes and say “Fuckin' Jaeger,” but he couldn't manage to do so as he stared at the pink blush still tinging Armin's cheeks. Seeing the normally serious boy (and Armin was usually one hundred percent serious when it came to problem sets) look so happy was doing weird things to Jean's insides.

Shit. What the hell was this train of thought? He had Marco, for crying out loud. He was happy with Marco, he even thought he might love Marco. So what was he doing, checking out the boyfriend of his bitter frenemy?

“Gotta take a leak, be right back,” he mumbled to Armin, who only nodded absently as he was still immersed in his text conversation with Eren. He almost ran to the bathroom.

He splashed cold water on his suddenly burning face, trying to sort out the contents of his mind. He was most definitely _not_ developing a crush on Armin, he decided as he glared at his reflection in the mirror. He was just... compensating, for years of denying his attraction to guys. Yes, that was it. All his long repressed bisexual feelings making up for lost time, taking advantage of Jean's new honesty with himself to overwhelm and confuse him. It didn't mean anything at all. Jean had a wonderful boyfriend and he would surely forget these confusing, no-doubt mostly hormonal feelings as soon as he came back to their room tonight after he finished his problem set.

He flew through the rest of the assignment, not even caring about his sloppy work. He just needed an excuse to get away from Armin and his delicate wrists that were exposed when Armin rolled up the sleeves of his too-big sweater (even if that sweater had originated from Eren, Jean still found it endlessly endearing) and his petite nose scrunched deep in thought and - oh _shit_ , Jean was doing it again. Fuck these linear regressions. Jean had to get out of here.

He faked a yawn and started throwing his things into his bag. “Hey, I'm kinda tired. I think I'll finish this on my own later, after a nap or something. You gonna be ok without me?”

Armin blinked up at him, looking confused and perhaps a bit concerned. Shit, that yawn had probably seemed really fake. Jean forced a laugh. “Haha, who am I kidding, you're the guy who sets the curve. Of course you'll be fine! I think us working together probably only benefits me, anyway.” Wow. Real smooth, Kirschstein. His brain had taken a wrong turn on the way to meet his mouth.

Armin's brow wrinkled. “Are you feeling okay, Jean?”

“Yeah, just tired, I hope I don't have that bug that's been going around campus. I should go. Before I get you sick, I mean. Yeah. Bye.” Before he could embarrass himself further, he hefted his bag onto one shoulder and positively ran away.

“Feel better soon,” Armin called after him, and Jean really hoped that he would.

When he got back to his room, Marco was inside. Seeing his boyfriend's face light up as he opened the door flooded Jean's gut with guilt.

“Hey, you're back early. Problem set too easy for you?” Marco leaned over from his computer desk to give Jean a kiss, which he shamefully accepted.

“Yeah, you know me, top of the class, breaking the curve,” he attempted to hide his unease through his usual blustering bravado. Marco didn't seem to catch on, as he hummed contentedly and went back to his laptop. 

“Right, and Armin helping you had nothing to do with it, I'm sure,” Marco said. “Oh, by the way, Eren's coming over in a bit to work on a group project. Sorry! I didn't think you were coming back until eleven.”

Ugh. Jaeger was the last person Jean wanted to see in his current weird emotional state, but he didn't have the energy to protest. “It's cool, just keep him on a short leash.”

Marco waggled his eyebrows from behind his computer screen. “Ooh, _kinky_.”

To which Jean rolled his eyes and flicked Marco's nose for, but his mind, traitor that it was, raced dangerously to consider the implications of Eren and kinky in the same sentence. The part of his brain that was controlled by his dick (and was apparently a force of evil) did not seem to mind at all, which horrified the rest of Jean to the point of bonelessness as he slid into his own chair and opened his laptop.

He absently scrolled his Facebook feed. Eren had posted links to a shit-ton of news articles, spamming his dash as usual with his all-caps commentary on the painfully obvious. (Yes, he was Facebook friends with Eren, though neither would admit to being the one to send the friend request. It was as if they both understood the need to have someone to reliably be mad at on the internet.) It wasn't even that Jean necessarily disagreed with Eren's opinions; he just found the way he went on and on to be incredibly obnoxious and self-righteous.

A knock at the door. Speak of the devil. Marco gave Jean a glance that said _behave_ before getting up to answer.

Jean quickly brought up the paper he was supposed to be writing, not wanting Eren to see him stalking his Facebook.

“Hey Marco, I just had the best idea for our presentation topic on the way over-” Eren stopped mid-sentence to glare over at Jean's desk. “Oh, _he's_ in here?”

“Jaeger.”

“Kirschstein.”

Marco theatrically rolled his eyes. “Yes, you know each other's last names, very good. Do we need to move this to the library, Potter and Malfoy?”

Geez, way to make him feel like a child. “Don't worry, just act like I'm not here.”

“My pleasure.” Eren smirked, and damn was he lucky that Jean was too busy with inner conflict to punch him in the face. “So about the project...”

Jean stuck his earbuds in and tried to focus. He was a damn good student, he thought, to be able to block out the inappropriate thoughts about Armin from his mind and force himself to think about footnotes and citations instead.

At least, until a loud guffaw from Eren pierced through the wall of ambient electronica Jean had blasting in his ears. He plucked his earbuds out to hear just what was so funny.

“No way,” Marco was laughing so hard he was gasping for breath, “Professor Zacharius may be... _unconventional_ , but there is no way he's gonna let that slide if you leave that in.”

“Fortune favors the bold! If anything he should be impressed that our research went this in depth.”

Seeing Marco laughing alongside Eren made Jean reconsider the pissy complaint he had been about to yell. At least someone was having fun with their schoolwork. Jean allowed himself a quiet grumble and a resentful but silent stare.

It was strange seeing Eren with an expression other than combative, with his ridiculous eyebrows relaxed and his usually intense eyes crinkled in laughter. He looked... really good actually, if Jean was going to be honest with himself, lying on his belly next to Marco and their respective laptops-

No. Jean stopped the thought in its tracks before it could progress any further. It was just a testament to his boyfriend's ability to bring out the best in everyone around him that he could make even Eren Jaeger seem tolerable by sheer virtue of his presence. Yeah. That was it.

Of course, Jean's desire to stop his thoughts did little to actually stop them, and he found his gaze wandering over the slight stretch of Eren's v-neck over his chest, the dip between his clavicles that fluttered as he laughed, the way his upper arms filled out the sleeves of his shirt even as his forearms tapered into lean wrists.

Oh God. Help.

He forced his attention back onto his laptop screen, which had since dimmed from lack of activity. He shook his mouse angrily to wake it up and typed a line or two. He backspaced through when he realized what he had written was completely incoherent.

“Hey babe, I'm gonna make a food run to the convenience store. You want anything?” Marco said to Jean as he stood up and stretched.

“Nah, I'm good,” Jean muttered through the coiling snake of guilt in the pit of his belly, not daring to look at his boyfriend in the eye.

“Don't forget the extra salsa on the nachos,” Eren called after Marco as he left. 

Alone in the room with Jean, Eren was uncharacteristically silent, save for his obnoxiously loud typing. And breathing. 

“Do you have to type so hard? Your keys are gonna fall off like that,” Jean snapped when he could tolerate the tapping and breathing and the lack of conversation no longer.

“Dude, just shut up and put your headphones back in,” Eren didn't even bother to look up at him. He only continued his typing, making an obvious effort to smash his keys even louder than before.

Jean considered getting up and kicking Eren's laptop across the floor, but the thought of Marco's disapproving face made think better of it. He settled for a melodramatic sigh and stuffed his earbuds back in.

His Pandora-induced hypnosis was interrupted yet again when Eren's phone rang, a loud and tinny rendition of some indie hipster nonsense from last year. He turned the volume up and tried to block it out.

“Hey Annie, what's up?” Eren said, phone balanced on his shoulder as he continued abusing his poor keyboard. “Sorry, I can't. I'm at Marco's for a group project. How about tomorrow night?”

A chortle from Eren. “I left _what_ at your place? Huh, I was wondering where my favorite pair of boxers went.”

Jean surreptitiously turned the volume on his music down, heart pounding. Did he just hear that correctly?

“Did you at least wash them for me? No? Ugh, they must be so stinky by now. What the hell, Annie? What about all those times I washed your sweaty bras for you?”

It took all of Jean's self-control to keep himself hunched over his own laptop and pretend that he wasn't intently eavesdropping on Eren's conversation.

“Yeah, yeah. Is Mina gonna be out of the room tomorrow night?”

Jean jumped in his chair as their room door opened and Marco returned with the nachos and promised extra salsa. 

“Heh, ok, see you then. I gotta go, bye.” Eren turned his attention to devouring the nachos as innocently as if he hadn't just implicated himself in front of Jean.

“Want some?” Marco offered the plate to Jean, who could only mumble something about not being hungry. Which was the truth, as Jean's entire stomach had grown cold and clenched with the weight of the terrible secret he had suddenly become privy to.

Oh God, Armin was going to be _crushed_.

Jean felt the betrayal in a strangely personal way as he blearily watched Eren stuff his face with nachos and salsa. Sure, he had never gotten along with him, but deep down he had always believed Eren to be a fundamentally good and well, _honorable_ person. And to be honest with himself, seeing Eren's casual openness about his relationship with Armin had done wonders for Jean's abilities to come to terms with his feelings for Marco.

But there was no way he could be misinterpreting that conversation between him and Annie, no matter how much he wanted to tell himself it wasn't true. What legitimate excuse could there possibly be for leaving one's underwear over in someone's room? And for making sure one's roommate would be out of the room for the night? Jean's eyes fixed sadly on a string of melted cheese dangling from Eren's mouth. That cheese was smearing grease on the face of a cheater. It was fucking heartbreaking.

Jean didn't know Annie that well, but he had respected her. A fellow pre-med, she had been refreshingly honest about her desire for financial stability and was one of the few classmates who was willing to admit that she would probably be a plastic surgeon to the wealthy instead of pretending to want to cure cancer or something. (Also, it had been hot as hell when she reduced a classmate into quivering, sobbing submission with the mere force of her icy stare in freshman year when he made the mistake of asking her if she was going to give herself a nosejob.) God, and hadn't she been on pretty good terms with Armin as well? How could someone who seemed to value honesty as much as Annie did be part of a lie like this? How could anyone bear to see how fucking adorable Armin was when he was with Eren and be willing to destroy that?

He was so distraught he didn't even notice when Eren and his loud typing and breathing left. He didn't even notice Pandora telling him to confirm that he was in fact, still listening to the now-silent station.

“Babe, are you okay? You're looking really stressed out,” Marco called over to him, scraping the last of the cheese from the now empty plate of nachos. 

Jean considered telling Marco what he had just heard, but soon thought better of it. Midterms were coming up in just a few weeks, and the messy, painful breakup that was bound to ensue might jeopardize Armin's hitherto stellar academic career. He couldn't let that happen to Armin, couldn't let Eren's indiscretions ruin his life. What a scandal that would be – star student brought down by scumbag cheating boyfriend. On page 2 of the news, Jean Kirschstein – not as good a judge of character as he thought he was.

“I'm fine, it's been a long day. This paper is giving me trouble,” he said, resigning himself to the heavy weight of Eren's secret. “I think I'm going to bed early tonight.”

“If you say so,” Marco threw him a concerned glance, but didn't push it. Normally Jean loved that about him, how Marco knew him and his occasional moods and when he needed to just stew on his own. But now he almost wished that Marco would force the secret out of him so he wouldn't have to bear it alone. 

Why did all the movies and books insist that people could communicate through their eyes? He tried sending Marco the signal that he desperately wanted to be asked about what was bothering him. Marco only remarked that Jean should probably get more sleep, as there was a nasty twitch developing under one of his eyes. Damn lying movies. Damn dense (but still loving and handsome and wonderful, Jean quickly mentally amended) Marco.

Damn emotionally vulnerable and far-too-adorable Armin. Damn unfairly attractive, cheating Eren.

He did end up going to bed early, but he lay awake for a long time that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am fully aware that this is 100% silly and self-indulgent shameless fluff, but my desire for this shippery to exist has beaten out my embarrassment for being responsible for this. I would make apologies but I have none. (flies into the sun)


End file.
